


millions of years yet to come (and in all dimensions)

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 07:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12979029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: “Director Hunter once told me that I reminded him of you.”“I don’t think that was a compliment.”





	millions of years yet to come (and in all dimensions)

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by jackie who doesnt ship this (yet) but i'll badger her into it

1

“You remind me of someone I once knew.” 

“Who was she?”

It wasn’t a question that ought to have been asked. 

It was a step outside of bounds, crossing a line that had her fellow Time Bureau recruits already shooting Ava sympathetic looks, as though this was it, the moment the Directors would realize she wasn’t suited for the sensitive business of time travel and send her on her way. 

She regrets asking a moment later.

Regrets it in the long pause the follows, the way Director Hunter doesn’t look at her, or any of them, just down at the folder in his hands. 

She’s certain that it was supposed to have been a compliment. After all, Ava had just succeed in laying out three of her companions on the practice mats, her bow staff still heavy in her hands, growing heavier by the second, as though it might fall from her fingers and clatter to the floor.

She’s not certain if that will make things better or worse. 

Eventually, Director Hunter speaks, tone formal, no inflection, but Ava has been trained to read people and she can see between the lines - “Her name was Sara Lance.” 

  
  


(“Director Hunter once told me once that I reminded him of you.”

“I don’t think that was a compliment.”)

  
  


2

A research opportunity, that’s what she decides this is. To discover the reason Director Hunter lingers in her training sessions, not observing her work, as her Academy instructors are quick to point out, but for another reason entirely.

A reason that Ava isn’t sure is a a good thing. 

Sara Lance. 

She’s heard the stories of her, a former member of Director Hunter’s team. The team that had destroyed all of time in an attempt to save the world. The people, who by doing so, were the reason the Time Bureau was established.

Everyone had heard of them, of the  _ Incident _ , where all of this began, but beyond that - 

They were a cautionary tale. 

Not one to be dwelled on, certainly not to be idolized. 

And yet - 

Ava finds herself reading everything she can on the  _ infamous  _ Sara Lance, scourging records and mission reports. 

She tells herself that it’s because she doesn’t want to make the same mistakes. 

She tells herself that this is purely an academic interest. 

She tells herself that looking down at the photograph they have on file for Sara for far too long is normal. 

Her interest doesn’t go unnoticed. There’s a file slipped under the door, written in Director Hunter’s nearly illegible handwriting. 

It’s not very thick, not much at all. 

But it’s something. 

Something that she stays up reading late into the night, using her phone to illuminate the pages as she huddles under her blankets in an attempt not to wake her roommate.

  
  


(“I wrote my dissertation on you.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Me neither.”)

  
  


3

She shouldn’t be doing this.

She’s not a reckless recruit anymore, not the sort of person that can get away with breaking protocol - and that’s exactly what this is. A breach of protocol, a possible danger to all of time. 

And isn’t that what got them all into this mess in the first place?

Level headed people acting irrational because  _ Sara Lance  _ was involved. 

But this -

Surely, in the grand scheme of things, this night won’t matter. 

Telling herself that doesn’t make it any easier, but she convinces a group of them to go out, a much needed break on a Friday night. She lets her hair down, puts on a dress that she hardly feels comfortable in with a pair of heels that at least serve to make her legs look longer, and crosses the city to a nightclub that, thanks to the gifts of foresight, she knows to be a cover for more vigilant operations. 

She’d wondered about this moment, what it would be like, there across the room seeing a woman that’s only ever appeared in her textbooks, and in Director Hunter’s melancholic stories. 

Sara is everything she’d imagined.

And everything she didn’t know to.

She’s beautiful, there behind the bar in a low cut dress, mixing up something that Ava doesn’t know the name of. It’s almost too much. She shouldn’t have come here, all the rules she’s breaking just being here setting off warning bells in Ava’s head, and yet, she moves forward, in her rarest moment of recklessness. 

She leans against the counter, in a way that is not graceful or elegant, or anything that should draw attention to her, but it does, for a moment Sara’s eyes are on hers and Ava wants to blurt it all out, to say something embarrassing like  _ I know everything about you _ , but she resists, keeps it inside. 

“What can get you?” 

“Something strong?”

  
  


( “You say that like you’ve never broken a rule in your life.”

“I haven’t.”

“Bullshit.”)

  
  


4

“She’s going to die tonight.”

“What?” The word slips out of her mouth before she can stop it. He catches her off guard, a rare sort of thing, but not all that surprising. She’s risen up enough if the ranks that Director Hunter casually leaning against the door to her office isn’t a shock or a cause for concern.

Not when the sun has long set, and Ava’s likely one of the few people left in HQ, a report on a level eight anachronism in Guam keeping her distracted from the rest of the world.

Though that report is long forgotten when she looks up and sees the tired look in his eyes and she knows.

This time Ava doesn’t have to ask  _ who _ .

There is only one possible answer. 

Another question rising up in her mind, nearly making its way past her lips, ‘ _ And there’s nothing we can do to stop it _ ?’ she knows better than to ask. There’s rules to time travel, and this is one of them. 

She’s pretty sure he feels the same way. 

“I need a drink, you can join me if you’d like.” 

She’s not sure a drink will make any difference -  not when she can already feeling it eating away at her, regret for not saving a woman that doesn’t even know her, a woman that won’t even stay dead - but it’s a start. 

  
  


(“You were in a coma.”

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t my first coma.”

“You nearly died, how was I not-” 

“Not the first time for that either.”)

  
  


5

“Does this only come in a family pack?” 

She’s running errands, not thinking about anything or anyone, when it happens. 

It catches her surprise, when the employee Ava had intended to badger about the mass production of bath towels turns around and Ava knows who she is at once. She doesn’t even need to look down to be certain, to check the name tag pinned to her chest, and yet Ava does, on the off chance, just to make sure. 

Reading the carefully printed letters that spell out  _ Sara  _ doesn’t make this any less complicated.

Not when it’s so quickly become obvious that Ava isn’t listening to whatever answer Sara is giving. 

“My eyes are up here.”

“I wasn’t,” Ava says quickly, because she really  _ wasn’t _ , “I was reading your name tag.”

There’s a sort of half disbelieving hum from Sara, and of course,  _ this  _ would be the one time they actually meet, when their timelines are both heading the same direction at the same time. 

Because that was just Ava’s luck. 

“Have we met before?”

“No,” Ava says quickly, probably too quickly, but she’s not even listening to herself anymore, because there’s a buzzing in her ears that won’t seem to go away, and she needs to get out of this shop sooner rather than later. “No, I - Thank you for your help, I’m just going to buy eight of these now.” 

  
  


(“Is there any reason all of the towels in your house are the same shade of blue?”

“I didn’t know that it was possible to make me regret shower sex, but somehow you managed to.”)

  
  


+1

None of her research account for this. For the feeling that spreads out through Ava, a feeling that she can’t help, that makes her cheeks burn. Though she supposes it was all sort of inevitable.

For every moment that Sara frustrates her.

For every time that she makes Ava regret ever having joined the Time Bureau.

For every lingering look. 

There’s a moment, a moment of new discovery, when Sara kisses her in the middle of arguing, intending to shut her up, and all Ava can think is, nowhere in her research did she ever discover how incredible of a kisser Sara is.

But as they pull apart to remember how to breathe, foreheads pressed together, a battlefield raging around them, Ava thinks that perhaps kissing her once more, if only for research purposes, wouldn’t hurt.

  
  


(“What’s wrong with you people? Do you want to get shot?”)

 


End file.
